What You’ve Missed

Book Review: Gone Girl

Warning: This post will have spoilers from the movie and the book Gone Girl. It will also have some use of the word “bitch” and I know this can seem offensive. If you’re easily or even slightly offended by that word, you should just skip this post altogether.

While I was on my military training last month one of the Captain’s that was sharing a suite with me was reading the book Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Now, I’d already saw the movie a few months ago with Lorenzo when we were hanging out with some friends in Snellville. I’d never heard of the book (or the movie) at that point so the only reaction to Amy’s behavior is “bitches be crazy”. Seriously.

I usually like to read the book before I watch a movie so that I could have a full understanding of what is going on and I’m able to fill in the blanks when I have questions that the movie can’t answer. Since I had some downtime while I was away I decided to give the book a try. I needed to get in Amy’s head.

The book started off a little slow, it took a while for the book to include Amy’s fake journal and then even longer for the real Amy to surface. Now, while I wanted to punch Nick in the head throughout the entire movie for being so stupid, the book made me hate him even more. Nick wasn’t my concern though it was really Amy. She took so much time and effort and planning to set Nick up for her murder, just to turn around and go back to him in the end. It all just seemed like a whole lot of effort just to get Nick to…wait…I’m not exactly sure what she was trying to get out of him. To love her? See the error of his ways? All because you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of getting a divorce- that would be too easy for him. Okay then, I guess.

When Nick started gathering some background info on his wife, they show a scene in the movie where an ex of Amy’s was telling him how she accused him of rape after they had consensual sex. He explained how she’d completely set him up and ruined his life. What the movie doesn’t mention is how after Amy called the police on the guy she sent him a creepy note stating something along the lines of “Next time you’ll know”. What was the guy’s crime? He started dating someone else.

There was a story of another girl that Amy went to school with when she was younger. According to Amy’s parents the girl (Hannah?? My memory is crappy) became obsessed with Amy and told Amy’s mother that she was going to kill Amy and replace her. When Nick went to finally speak with adult Hannah she told the real story of how she was new to the boarding school, Amy befriended her, and when Hannah started to become more popular than Amy, she became weird. Amy offered to dye Hannah’s hair the same color as hers and told her to play a joke on her mom by saying that she would replace Amy. Then Amy threw herself down a flight of stairs and blamed Hannah for it. When Hanna moved back home because of the embarrassment (and restraining order) she also got a note from Amy with the same creepy message that she sent the guy. Crazy bitch.

Amy liked to teach people a lesson, apparently. There was a short period of time when I wanted to feel sorry for her. She expressed her disdain for her husband by talking about women having to play the role of the “Cool Girl” in order to please a guy. While I could agree with her to an extent she turned around and started acting crazy again so I went back to hating her. While Amy was a very intelligent woman, she was very manipulative, conniving, and vengeful. She made people love her and then used them like she was a puppet master. I kind of felt that she and Nick deserved each other.

Anyway, while I think the book and the movie were definitely entertaining they are not items I would put on my top 10 list. I was just happy to be able to make time to read an actual paper book. Amy’s still a bitch though. I’m just saying.